


What's Common Sense Got to do With It?

by chellefic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-14
Updated: 2010-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 10:32:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chellefic/pseuds/chellefic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set near the end of season five. Who can sleep when there's pie?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Common Sense Got to do With It?

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is entirely Grrrl's fault.

The coffee is bitter and not in the good, crisp way. Making a face, Dean puts the cup back on the table and picks up his fork. Hopefully, the pie will be better.

It is, but just barely. "Nothing's perfect," he says, and it comes out with more sigh in it than it should have, making him frown.

"No," Castiel agrees. He's frowning at his own pie, the neon lights from the "Open 24 Hours" sign turning his cheek an odd shade of blue.

It's 3 a.m. The apocalypse clock is counting down, and Dean knows he should be asleep, should be resting while he can. But he doesn't want to. "Nobody's perfect, either."

"No." After a moment, Castiel adds, "Not even my father."

Dean would be the first to agree, but he's surprised enough by the statement that he doesn't. Sam would probably say something about how discovering your parents aren't perfect is a step on the road to adulthood, or some such bullshit. Dean doesn't. Dean asks, "What makes you say that?" because he wants to know.

"You aren't perfect."

It's not exactly news, but the words still make his gut hollow out and he drops the fork onto the plate, leaning back in the booth and bringing his elbow up to rest on the back.

"You're intractable, recalcitrant--"

"Hey!" Dean protests, cutting him off. Intractable is okay, but he doesn't like the sound of recalcitrant.

"The odd thing is it's your stubbornness, your insistence on finding your own way, doing things yourself, that gives you the strength you need to withstand everything you've had to do, even though that same stubbornness makes things harder," Cas says. His voice is softer than it usually is, considering, like he's mulling over the words as he says them.

Dean mulls them over, too. "That sounds right."

Cas takes a bite of his pie, his eyes on Dean's as he chews. A normal guy would probably squirm, but Dean's never been all that normal. "You're a mass of contradictions. You forgive others, but hold yourself to an impossible standard. You take comfort from casual sexual contact, while denying yourself the pleasure of being held by someone who truly knows you, someone you trust."

"I get it. I'm imperfect."

"And yet you aren't." Cas shakes his head. "That, too, is a contradiction."

"You think your father is imperfect because there are contradictions."

"I think my father is imperfect because he let us believe that we knew love when we had never known loss, joy when we had never known sorrow."

"That's your reason?" Dean leans across the table, adds in a lower voice, "Not the fucking apocalypse?"

Cas shrugs. "You asked."

Dean shifts back, stares at him, because when they first met, Cas would never have shrugged. Everything had mattered back then, nothing could be shrugged off, not a single word, not a single breath, and certainly not God.

"There's this movie," he says, when staring doesn't tell him anything he didn't already know, "Miracle on 34th Street. I hated it, but Sam really liked it when he was a kid, so we used to watch it. It's a Christmas movie about a kid learning to believe in Santa Claus. Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to, that's what she says in the movie. Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to. I hated that."

For some reason, Castiel looks up at him, his lips spreading and curving into a smile. It looks good on him. "I'm sure you did," he says.

Smiling back, Dean picks up his fork and pushes it into his pie, filling the fork. He's had worse and still enjoyed it.

"Do you believe?" Cas asks quietly, pulling Dean's attention away from the pie.

"You know I don't."

Cas shakes his head. "In me. Do you believe in me? That in the end, I'll do the right thing?"

"Yes." The word comes out without Dean even thinking about it. It's one of those things he knows in his gut, that in the end, Castiel will do what's right, will take on the whole of heaven and hell if he has to. He has no idea when he became more certain of Cas than he is of Sam and the thought makes him shift in his seat.

Cas leaves the crust of his pie untouched on his plate. He always leaves the crust, no matter how many times Dean tells him it's the best part, even though it isn't.

Dean takes another sip of the not-good coffee, which is even worse now that it's lukewarm, and stares at the patch of neon on Cas's face. He doesn't look like an angel. Despite the suit, he doesn't look like some drone in a cubicle either.

He looks like a hunter. Tired, wary, worn down by loss and grief, but determined to continue the fight until he doesn't have anything left. It's a look Dean's pretty familiar with. He's been seeing it in the mirror as long as he can remember.

"Do you believe?" The question brings Cas's gaze to his. He used to think the steel in those eyes was angel. Now he knows it's Cas. "In me?"

After all this time, he expects Cas to smile, point out all the things he's done because he believes, but that belief wasn't in him. That belief was in God. In God's choice of Dean.

Cas nods slowly. "I do."

"Why?"

"Because you're imperfect."

As an explanation, it makes no sense. But Dean gets it. Deep in his gut, he gets it.

It's only later, when he's laying in the motel bed, trying for a few hours of sleep, that he thinks about what Cas said about finding comfort with someone who knows him. He wonders what it would be like to lean on someone else, to have someone who would prop him up when he feels like he can't take another step. Maybe then he wouldn't have to be so-- recalcitrant.

Then he looks at Cas, awake or maybe drowsing in the other bed -- it's hard to tell with Cas-- and thinks maybe he's finding out.


End file.
